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Senator Ettelson and the Crime of the Century

Chicago has always been a tough town, and those near the seats of power often hear things they’d rather not. My distant cousin, Illinois State Senator Sam Ettelson, was no exception. According to Marjorie Warvelle Bear’s A Mile Square of Chicago, he was born in Chicago on November 19th 1874 to Benjamin and Flora Ettelson. His mother was an immigrant from Germany, and his father was from Poland. Sam rose through the ranks of Chicago society first as a prominent lawyer, then a Senator, and then Corporation Counsel for the city of Chicago. It was under these auspices that he became right-hand man to Chicago Mayor William Hale Thompson, better known as “Big Bill,” and even better known as one of the most crooked mayors in the history of this country. Such cheery events such as the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre occurred during Big Bill’s tenure. When the Mayor hit the drink a little too hard, he would hand the reins over to my cousin, and Senator Sam Ettelson would essentially be in charge of Chicago for the night. Big Bill Thompson was driven out of office once in 1923, but ushered back in with the help of his buddy Al Capone in 1927.

In those in between years, my cousin Sam would become unwittingly embroiled in what would become known as the “Crime of the Century.” I had always known the story of Leopold and Loeb, the two young men who mercilessly murdered a young school boy named Bobby Franks. It has been the basis for countless films, plays, and books—most notably Hitchcock’s experimental thriller Rope. What I didn’t know was my family’s involvement in the mystery. The parents of the young victim were Jacob and Flora Franks, a Jewish family that had renounced their faith to become Christian Scientists. They were also close, personal friends with Sam Ettelson. When the Franks received a ransom note from Leopold and Loeb, notifying them that they had Bobby, Ettelson was called on to handle the affair. Senator Sam knew the Leopold family and was a mover and a shaker in the Jewish Community of Chicago. Sam called on his contacts in the Chicago police department to try and sort things out. But by that point it was too late. The ransom note had only been a cruel ruse. The boy, Bobby Franks, had already been found dead. After years of public service, the legacy of my distant cousin Sam Ettelson will forever be defined by his involvement in this bizarre and tragic episode of Chicago history.

2 Responses

This is fascinating stuff, and a great look at two different, but intersecting, topics (in addition to your family history, of course): Jewish Chicago and American Jewish crime. If you’re interested in thinking more about either of these, well, for the former you can’t do better than the short stories and novels of Saul Bellow, who, even though he was Canadian himself, adopted Chicago as his home and told the stories of the shtarkers and tough (Jewish) guys that populated the place in the Twenties, Thirties, and Forties; for the latter, Jenna Weissman Joselit’s Our Gang – a non-fiction book – talks about the history of Jewish crime in America, a fascinatingly sordid one. Just some thoughts –

HALF-REMEMBERED STORIES

In July 2010, we will be rolling out a multi-media exhibition about lost people, lost places, and the quest to reclaim lost memory. In preparation for this exhibit, we've invited 16 young Jews, ages 15 to 25, to blog.